If you've not read the entire address,
you'll want to. Below is the section about family, marriage, and
gender, a passage causing some hand-wringing among those who apparently
haven't figured out that (gasp!) the Pope and the Catholic Church does
and always will support and defend marriage as a life-long bond between a
man and a woman. The Telegraph, for example, has the headline, "Pope says future of mankind at stake over gay marriage",
and the subhead: "Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on a heated debate
over gay marriage, criticising new concepts of the traditional family
and warning that mankind itself was at stake."

Of course, the
Holy Father never mentions "gay marriage", or even the word "marriage",
for his criticisms are aimed at something deeper and broader than the
frivilous narcissism and flawed understanding of equality found
throughout the "gay marriage" movement. They are focused on what might
be called a secularist form of neo-gnosticism, which seeks to remake
human nature according to the destructive whims and passions of the age.
"Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being,
no longer exist," Benedict XVI says about this anti-human approach, "Man
calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and
will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our
environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he
himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human
being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be."

The
attacks on marriage throughout the West are serious and significant, but
are one big battle in an even bigger war, which is ultimately about God
himself, as the Pope makes clear.

The great joy with which families from all over the world congregated in Milan
indicates that, despite all impressions to the contrary, the family is still
strong and vibrant today. But there is no denying the crisis that threatens it
to its foundations  especially in the western world. It was noticeable that
the Synod repeatedly emphasized the significance, for the transmission of the
faith, of the family as the authentic
setting in which to hand on the blueprint of human existence. This is something
we learn by living it with others and suffering it with others. So it became
clear that the question of the family is not just about a particular social
construct, but about man himself  about what he is and what it takes to be
authentically human. The challenges involved are manifold. First of all there
is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to avoid
commitment. Can one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this correspond to man’s
nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the scope of his
self-realization? Does man become himself by living for himself alone and only
entering into relationships with others when he can break them off again at any
time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to freedom? Is commitment also worth
suffering for? Man’s refusal to make any commitment  which is becoming
increasingly widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and
self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering  means that man
remains closed in on himself and keeps his “I” ultimately for himself, without
really rising above it. Yet only in self-giving does man find himself, and only
by opening himself to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by
letting himself be changed through suffering, does he discover the breadth of
his humanity. When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human
existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child  essential elements of the
experience of being human are lost.

The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and
profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the
true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much
deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of
human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear
that the very notion of being  of what being human really means  is being
called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one
is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient).
These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term
“gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is
no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make
sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it
was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the
anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the
idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a
defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it
is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for
themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as
male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is
an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This
very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words
of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no
longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them
male and female  hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man
and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer
exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and
will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment
is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is
concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for
himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as
complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there
is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the
family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has
lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.
Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has
become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to
obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself,
then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped
of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his
being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear
that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is
defending man.

Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight.

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